Ata Mohamed Tabriz
Iran analyst
Ata Mohamed Tabriz is a researcher in political science and contemporary Iran
Iran analyst
Ata Mohamed Tabriz is a researcher in political science and contemporary Iran
Tehran’s posture increasingly resembles that of an embattled state that sees greater odds of survival in confrontation than in compromise—one that views a decisive clash not as catastrophe, but as a potential turning point.
The latest round of Iran-US talks in Geneva on Tuesday would likely not have taken place without sustained pressure from regional powers that leveraged their close relations with Washington to help avert a wider war.
Iranians’ chants against the Islamic Republic—muted for now by brute force—are viewed in Turkey not as a struggle for freedom but as a geopolitical risk from migration and militancy.
The unprecedented brutal crackdown on recent protests in Iran suggests Tehran's rulers are no longer attempting to govern a discontented society but are in open conflict with it.
A lopsided war with Israel and the United States in June rattled Iran’s political order, but it survives through smarter coercion and the disarray of forces that might otherwise bring it down.
Tehran is in a tougher position after the 12-day war and the return of UN sanctions but may not be as close to collapse as some Iranians might like.
Tehran’s behavior after the June war with Israel reflects a state of suspended decision-making—a fragile equilibrium that may nevertheless endure, sustained by continuing control and the absence of any obvious alternatives.
Two years after the October 7 attack, the Middle East drifts between competing promises and stubborn realities: Khamenei’s dream of regional “de-Americanization” lies in ruins while Netanyahu’s “new order” remains elusive.
On the eve of the return of UN sanctions against Iran, all sides insist the doors of diplomacy remain open, but the table beyond those doors looks less like one for negotiation than for autopsy—an exercise in assigning blame for a failure long deemed inevitable.
Facing a grinding crisis and mounting calls at home to change course before disaster strikes, Iran’s rulers still speak in a language that suggests they prefer the risks of war to the uncertainties of reform.
